Name: Sal
Message: Hi I am hoping that I could dye my canvas boat cover. It is blue the sun basicly discolored the top I have read everything and stil I am unsure. Do you have suggestions for me?

This is a difficult problem. Is the canvas on your boat made of a natural fiber, such as cotton or hemp? If not, it will be difficult to dye. Also, any dye you can use will be far more susceptible to fading by the sun than dye that is added to acrylic fiber when it is still liquid, before it is spun or extruded into thread.

I can't recommend that you dye a polyester or acrylic canvas boat cover. The only dyes that work on these fibers require that you boil the fabric in the dye, which is unlikely to be practical for canvas the size of your boat cover. How large of a cooking pot would you need to invest in! Furthermore, you can dye acrylic only with special dyes, either basic dyes or disperse dyes, which can be purchased only by mail-order; polyester can be dyed only with disperse dyes. I do not like to recommend that beginning dyers use basic dyes, because some of them are more hazardous for the user; some basic dyes will even, on occasion, cause cancer years later for the user.

What may be your best bet, aside from getting a new boat cover made from Sunbrella® acrylic or another sun-resistant material, would be to paint your cover, instead of dyeing it. Normally we avoid using ordinary acrylic-based paints on fabric, unless they are specifically labeled as "fabric paints", because the paint will dry to a very stiff and scratchy finish, and because the paint might fail to penetrate and may peel off. By using a thin acrylic fabric paint, such as Setacolor paint or Jacquard Textile Paint, this problem can be avoided, but the cost of the paint may be too high for a large project such as yours, even when purchased in large money-saving quart-sized bottles. An alternative is to prepare your own fabric paint by mixing something called fabric medium with artists' acrylic paints, which will help the paint to penetrate the fabric. In any case, fabric paint will show wear from abrasion much sooner than dye will.

If you have a new boat cover made, the name brand Sunbrella® acrylic fabric, although very expensive, will last much longer in the sun, because the fiber is solution dyed with light-resistant pigments or dyes. Beware of counterfeit fabrics or non-sun-resistant fabrics, which will fade far more quickly.

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